Writing is the physical act of thinking

Butt ugly

I’m ready for the drooping pants fad to call it a season. Yes, I know it’s a fashion statement, called sagging. I also know it’s butt ugly.

As urban legend has it, this trend of showing off ones drawers (or worse, the tops of where the good Lord split you) began in prisons where prison inmates, denied belts, stopped caring about the pull of gravity and allowed their pants to sag below the curvature of their buttocks. Once back on the streets, some ex-cons continued to wear their prison-inspired garb. Rappers emulated the style in a cool pose of misguided machismo. Disturbingly, black boys, whose Mamas didn’t care or Daddies just returned from the Big House, embraced it. From there, the sans belt look (not to be confused with another sartorial style of the 1960s, for those old enough to remember) took off with white boys – and in some very primitive cultural outposts, even girls cracked the act.

Well, after all this time, that radio commentary popped up when a Polish television reporter went looking for signs of true red, white and blue Americana. Zuzaana Falzmann, a Washington correspondent with Polsat NewsTV, called me to ask whether I’d sit – actually stand – for an interview. Zuzaana (we’re on a first name basis now) wanted to know if I supported legislative bans on sagging pants. I don’t.

I did agree to do the interview (it’s in Polish, but since all the Americans speak English, you’ll follow it easy enough).

But to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t paying very close attention to how I dressed for it. No, my pants didn’t sag. Quite the opposite. On the day that I was to do the interview, I forgot about wearing television clothes when I got dressed. What are television clothes, you ask? Well, I have a uniform for television appearances: navy blazer, white shirt and boring red or blue tie. The idea is not to wear anything that is could be a distraction from what I want to say.

Ha! I broke my own rule, as you can see in my conversation with Zuzanna. Fortunately for me, the interview was for Polish audiences and almost nobody – save those of you who read my blog – will see my own fashion faux pas.

To tell the truth, even though I wouldn’t wear it on television again, I like my preppy-looking ensemble. But, of course, I have little sartorial shame – except when it comes to wearing sagging pants.